On the other hand, perhaps the truly subversive act is to be happy anyway.
My new zen book arrived in the mail yesterday: Waking Up to What You Do, with a foreward by Charlotte Joko Beck. I know I'm mentally with my people when I read a line like:
We all must engage in events as they unfold in our lives; we have a choice, however, to do this with either intelligence or ignorance.If yesterday I started out doing a little Snoopy jig, today I'm more of a Linus. I handed out the poetry pieces to my students with great enthusiasm, modeled expressive reading, opened up the meaning of words like "coursers," "shutters," and "sash." The students were excited, but I'm beginning to doubt my original vision of this happy, shining, performance. I'm curious to see the difference between the originally conceived idea and the final outcome. That's an unchanging truth: things rarely unroll as you plan.
Last year I found a clip of an inner city music teacher who taught his chorus of kids a version of Tori Amos' "Winter's Carol." Wow. What did he do to pull that kind of emotion and expression out of a bunch of young people? Surely more than practice. Though there must be practice, practice, practice. And I, the teacher, need to be one step ahead. I have to see what we need to practice, then I have to help the kids in a way that gets them excited and feeling good about it. I'll practice with my students, but there's something else that I think has to do with, dare I say it again, really seeing these kids for the people they are. Engage in the teacher student relationship with intelligence.
Off to yoga for real. Have whatever kind of day your're going to have, but be awake for it. I'll do the same.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPG3zSgm_Qo
The saddest thing about me, and those like me who think we have became enlightened is that we now think all other men are ignorant. The most ignorant being our past self who we see as the most clueless of all rubes. When maybe we were just as intelligent back then, as we are now, but just working with a completely different set of premises, a different focus, and maybe even on another time line. (a Star Trek TNextGen reference) How did I begin to think this?...Prolly when I started calling my second affiliation "my people" and found that when I moved away from THAT focus...how similar the move was to my first Paradigm shift... and how the reaction of the MY PEOPLE there, was so like the one MY First PEOPLE had. It appears that in every full SHIFT, we end up believing that who ever we were on the LAST plain was just a little duller and less aware than we currently are...and those who move to places we are not (yet?) must be deluded in doing so.
ReplyDeleteI got out a Journal from my High School "daze" and found that I had not been in a cloud at all. In fact I recognized that I may have had attributes which make my current state seem somewhat stodgy, certainly arrogant, and lacking an enthusiasm which I now envy... Even when I try to suggest that someone might want to reconsider a rational (as perhaps the assertion>>>>> that we ULTIMATELY do not have FREE (unfettered) agency, and therefore we have NO agency)I come off looking "holier than thou"...at least "smarter than thou"
What I recognized too was how much more engaging...and actually ENGAGED in life I was back then, (and doggonit, peope like me) how much more INNOCENT(in the not guilty sense) and teachable about so many things. I was simply unafraid to be.
I cant count the times since then that I have said...its not so much what I "know for sure", but what I'm CERTAIN just ain't so! What a contradiction. I was so flexible but resolute. Error prone but willing to roll with it. What impressed me most about reading "the old me" was how LOGICAL I was...and how WISE I seem in those pages. I recognized as I read that I was not very much like the Image of me I have created of myself thru recall, and repainting that old template with today's "superior" mind, understanding and may I say...enlightenment.
I have few friends from then, that are still close. But reading of those friends and my thots of them then, make my current friends seem...aloof, and way more self absorbed...And probably as willing to abandon me as readily when we begin to see things differently as those first friends were. Or was it I who abandoned THEM?.
I wonder if when I see those like I used to be, if I will decide as YOU did in this blog...to see them for the PEOPLE(said Human Beings) they are, and engage in the FRIEND FRIEND relationship with Humility, a respectful Curiosity,(about THEM and THEIR view) and that "Ford Light" (Ah haaa!) appreciation of each perspective...Three of the most critical aspects of Intelligence....I think.
Oh Jeez, I do go on...and on...does any of what I see seem reasonable? For me, today, it does.
Hmmm..."has became"... Perfect for someone who is truly, errrrrr .....intelligent? No?
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